


Sequereris Obeuntis Solis

by sparrowinsky



Category: Rome
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/pseuds/sparrowinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vorena loves her family, even if they're not all her blood and she's not always sure she likes them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sequereris Obeuntis Solis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jibrailis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibrailis/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy this fic, and apologize for any historical inaccuracies (hopefully few) and tense changes (probably many) within it.

The weight of Rome sits uneasy on Vorena in the days after her father is returned. Titus Pullo makes the best of their situaion, fighting for work with the ferocity she's known in him since she was a girl, but when she walks through the streets she can feel the gaze of the city on her back.

Her sister and brother see none of it, feel nothing. Lucius she understands, of course; the boy is just that, and hardly remembers the  things they've been through. He doesn't wake, sweating, to the sight of his mother's blood sticky on the ground. Her sister, she finds more confusing. The girl laughs, plays, as if the world has some goodness in it, as if they had not lived hell. 

Vorena herself feels it in every inch of her skin. She feels it standing in the kitchen, cutting meat with a slow and careful knife. She feels it by candlelight with a needle in between her fingers, with every stitch and flicker. She feels it most when she must sit by her father's bed, and feed him broth and soft bread, as his wound heals and sickness burns through him.

She stands by his bed when the physician comes, lays cold poultices upon his fevered brow, gently feeds him broth cooked with healing herbs. More often than not, she spends these moments remembering rough men atop her and considers putting her slim hands around his neck.

In the worst of the fever, writhing in pain, he mutters incoherently. Once, he grasps her hand with his old strength, and whispers  _Niobe_. That night she lays a palm atop his healing wound until he gasps, eyes still blind to the world. The fever breaks the next morning.

Vorena wakes with the early spring dawn, finds herself leaning precariously from stool to bed, his hand resting gently upon her dark hair. She can hear the sounds of the house waking, distantly, rustles and clatters and soft voices. In this room, though, the air is still and warm and silent, thick with near a decade of words unspoken.

When her father speaks at last, her throat betrays her, tightening with unshed tears and sympathy for the raw sound of his voice.

"I live," he murmurs, the words slow and laced with thick pain. 

_By my will,_  she considers saying, or  _as mother does not_ , or a thousand other things. Instead she rises, silent, to gather the herbs that will dull the worst of his pain. His hand slips from her hair without resistance.

"Yes." Now that she can see him, the face of a murderer, of a father, she can tug her anger to its proper place, a fire burning dull beneath her heart. She imagines it as a coiled snake, hissing at the threads of pity struggling to weave into something more.

He watches her, as silent as if he had slipped from the world instead of waking to the sun. Vorena knows he will not ask his questions, not of her. He thinks her weak, cowed. He is wrong, and so she speaks.

"You've been ill nearly three weeks. Pullo found enough work to feed us, but we haven't had the coin for rent and we'll be kicked out when the month turns. There wasn't enough for the house  _and_  the physician."

Her father grimaces, accepting the cup of cold tisane she hands him. "He should have taken you all away, and let me die. You're a fool," he adds, directing it past Vorena, and though she doesn't turn she knows Pullo must stand at the threshold. When he slips into the room it's suddenly overwhelming, as if the very air is displaced.  

"I'll start breakfast." She rises, knocking the stool over in her haste. Pullo eyes her as he has all these past weeks, with the air of someone appraising a feral animal. He, too, thinks her broken.

Vorena leaves them to the fight that's coming, ignoring the raised voices she can hear even a floor below and across the house. It's no longer her concern if her father tires or hurts himself; her duty is done. And (she acknowledges only in the furthest corner of her thoughts) she knows Pullo wouldn't let him re-injure himself. Vorena busies herself with pots and knives, and refuses to worry.

***

Lucius Vorenus has been on his feet for seventeen days when he demands that they leave. He does so in the middle of dinner, normally a quiet affair since his rise from the sickbed. They have no slaves, so Vorena cooks and her sister serves. The boys had squabbled when Pullo sat at the head of the table, but her father's stern visage has brought seventeen days of silence.

No one looks up, at first. Her brother and sister might not understand the significance, she thinks, and if Aeneas does, he shows no sign. Pullo toys with his food a moment, clearly irritated, but says nothing. Vorena forces herself to look down, and tries not to think of the last time she left Rome.

Vorenus seems to take the silence for assent.

"We'll leave in a fortnight. Horses for us, brother, and a wagon for the children." He pauses. "Gaul, I think."

Pullo's fist is clenched tight around his spoon within the first few words. With the last, he explodes.

"Gaul? Are you mad? You want to go to  _Gaul._  With your  _children_. And how do you expect us to pay our way? Pay for horses and a wagon?" He sucks in a breath, face twisting. The spoon is bent between his knuckles, likely beyond repair. "Think, man. I can find work in Rome, you know I can, but we'll never manage up north. Not with the children."

Vorena braces, breathing slowly, evenly.  _I am not here_. She braces against the table and wills it to defend her from her father's anger. She is so well-prepared for it that his calm, quiet words leave her shaken.

"Think, yourself. Am I to hide my face forever? Better to have let me die, and you didn't. Octav- ...Augustus thinks me in Pluto's clutches, old friend. It endangers us all to remain in Rome."

"Only if  _you_  do." The words escape Vorena before the thought is even done. Vorena quails inside, breath and heart trembling, but forces herself to meet her father's pale eyes, so lacking in the anger she is accustomed to.

"Yes," he breathes out the word like all the pain of his wound, "but I will not lose my family again."

***

It happens that leaving Rome is not so difficult as any of them had expected. Titus Pullo, son of a slave, calls in favors from an emperor, and they find themselves with six good horses, two wagons, and a grant of land in Narbonica. Lucius leaves his face unshaven, though it galls him, and pours the juice of lemons over his hair, which turns a pale gold with days. He wraps himself in cheap brown wool, finds a walking stick, and until they leave the outskirts of room allows Pullo to call him  _slave_.

Vorena shivers as they step beyond the furthest walls of the city, feeling like she has been holding her breath for weeks and only now exhaled. Her fear of the city lifts even as she realizes it exists, and suddenly the fears of the world outside her home seems not quite so overwhelming. It is not, she reminds herself, anything like last time. Even if trouble befalls them, she is safe with these men, with her family. It's a strange thought, and for most of the languid summer day she turns it over in her mind, pokes and prods with the truth of it.

They ride in the wagons that first day, her father driving one and Pullo the other, riding-horses led behind. They make good time, even though the heat of the summer day prompts the men to keep the horses at a walk through most of it, and settle for the night south of the lake Volsiniensis. Everyone is quiet and tense, making camp with little fuss and much silence. Even Lucius, who has become prone to chatter on these past years, seems to understand the mood and sets himself to solemnly gathering kindling.

Vorena would rather run, if they must go; and she knows, having sit beside her father all through the day, and seen the tense lines of of his arms and stern set of his mouth, that she is not the only one. It's one thing to know they must go on as if they've no reason to fear, and another to actually do so. Better a god should pick them up and set them down upon their land in Gaul, and have it be done with.

A small banked fire brings no more conversation than the rest of the evening. Vorena lays herself in the back of a wagon to sleep before the sky is fully dark. The morning will come early enough, for they've a long way to go. Dawn still comes far too soon, light glinting off the lake and into her eyes. Pullo and Vorenus are already awake, looking as if they hadn't slept at all; Vorena spares a moment of resentment for that skill.

Soon enough her resentment is more like amusement. Her father had planned to ride today, being sufficiently out of the city, but neither man had thought of what to do with the carts. Aeneas is capable of driving one of the carts, though not well, but little Lucius can neither ride nor drive. Vorena watches them bluster for long minutes before some mischevious feeling takes hold in her, and she calmly seats herself in the other cart.

"I will drive it." Her words stop the men dead, ringing out calmly in the cool morning air. Vorena tucks every tremble of fear away into a little box deep inside, and uses an expression she remembers from her mother. Serene, competent. She spent the day before watching her father, and it seems not a particularly difficult task. Silence still reigns as she sits, as still as a temple statue. Long moments later, her father nods wordlessly, and mounts his chestnut gelding. Pullo follows suit, and they set out.

Where the night's silence had been a thing of nerves and tiredness, the morning's quiet feels relaxed and thoughtful. It lasts only an hour or so, for by the time they have reached the Via Cassia once more, Pullo is holding forth on the basics of horsemanship. He has determined, he says, that her brother will learn to be a far better horseman than Vorenus. Before long her sister is asking questions, determined to ride the horses too. Her arms ache from the weight of the reins and her head from concentrating on the horses' path, but it almost serves to make Vorena smile.

***

There is a chill in the air when they crest the hills beyond Massilia. The fall is colder in this northern clime than Vorena is used to, even though the days have been shortening over the course of their journey. Some three months before, she would have been appalled at her state: dusty skin; hair knotted back in a rough braid and surely looking like barely-secured snakes coiled about her head; and clothes so soft with wear she feared they might rip with the slightest breath of wind. Now, though, she only longs to cross into the city and sleep in a bed.

Vorena doesn't begrudge the way Pullo and Vorenus have hoarded their money and supplies, not really. She had complained at first, but after the first few weeks she had become less constantly exhausted, and some nights stayed awake to listen to them talk. She understood that when they reached their land they would need some way to produce upon it, and in truth she would rather the calm northward journey they'd experienced to some of the stories Pullo had told on the way. At least they were not likely to meet barbarians in this part of the province.

After sleeping on the side of the road or in small villages, Massilia seemed nearly as grand as Rome. Her siblings exclaim over it, too, and even Aeneas seems intrigued, though he still hides himself beneath the shreds of unearned dignity he has left.

The men concede to a night in real lodging, and better, trips to the bath. A real bath, warm and tiled and clean, and Vorena feels almost Roman again. Even young Lucius begins to resemble a boy more than a wild thing, after; for a few weeks she had begun to wonder which he was. Sleeping in a truly comfortable bed is somehow strange, and Vorena pulls a blanket to the floor just to escape her sister's kicking feet. To no avail; the younger Vorena has joined her there in the morning, snoring into her elder sister's ear. 

Vorena finds herself aimless. There is no travel, no wagon to drive; no cooking or cleaning to do, in this place that is not theirs. It's a lovely, well-kept place full of what appear to be well-off merchants, but by late morning Vorena itches for something do. She doesn't have to wait long, for noon arrives and with it her father and six slaves. The two women are obviously experienced, and speak Latin almost as well as Vorena herself, and one of the men appears to be a Greek, but the rest... big, bigger than Pullo, and their hair as fair as any she's ever seen. 

"We go to our land tonight," Vorenus tells her as Pullo arrives with the wagons. "The women are for the household, and the big brutes for the land. The old man is supposed to be a genius with new farms." His mouth twists, and he raises the shoulder of his good side in half a shrug. "He cost enough that I might cook him for dinner if he isn't." 

Vorena keeps her face straight until she sees the twist to his mouth, and then can't help but to giggle, only a little. They load the few belongings removed from the wagons back into them in companionable silence, listening to Pullo tease the younger children. The slaves pull themselves into the wagons last, women prodding at the larger men and shouting in some incomprehensible tongue. Vorena moves to climb onto the wagon seat, but her father pulls her aside. He breathes as if to speak, then drops his head, almost as if ashamed. Vorena has seen her father silent as often as she has seen the sun in the sky, but she's not sure she can recall having seen him at a loss for words. She considers letting him suffer in it, but something in her takes pity, and she touches his arm gently.

"...I spoke with a merchant of grains this morning. He has a son, a few years older than you, a good man... prosperous." He shrugs, meeting her eyes for a moment. "If you would meet him--" 

"No!" Vorena clenches her fist into her dress, willing her fingers to stop trembling. She swallows the scream that rises unbidden in her throat, and wishes-- not for the first time-- that she bore a cock between her legs, something to give her the right to let fly with fists. She wishes she could beat the man in front of her. Then, as a candle-wick pinched between two fingers, her rage flickers out. That he would seek a husband for her can only mean that her father does not think her broken. That he would offer her the choice, where law and custom affords him no cause and every right not to... Vorena lets herself wonder if, perhaps, it is the beginning of respect. She breathes in and out again, deep and controlled, and speaks only when her throat doesn't quiver with the effort.

"You will need the household managed. I know how... please." She ducks her head as if shy, to hide her tight smile when she lets fly the victory shot. "Please don't make me leave my family."

There is no further word spoken of men or marriage.

\----

Vorena struggles up the hill, the setting of the faint winter sun leaving a cold ache in her bones. She can remember running up this same hill, careless, immortal with youth. It seems an eternity ago.

Her father sits where she knew he would, beneath an ancient holly oak, watching the sun sink as he recounts a war story to Pullo. Vorena slows her step and approaches as quietly as she can, an old game. She makes it almost to the oak's shadow when her turns his head just the tiniest bit and smiles. 

"Come to take an old man home?" He pats the ground beside him. Vorena glances at his hand where it rests on a curving mound of dirt, and sits on the opposite side of her father.

"Come to listen to your story, o ancient one. I think your brother has heard it before." Vorena leans against the tree, listening to the soft breeze through its leaves echoing the softer laughter down the hill. "Will you not come and eat with us? The celebration is quiet without you." Her father laughs and pats her leg with a trembling hand.

"Quieter without Pullo. Your sister will manage, and Divalia isn't an old man's festival. I've a wineskin." He nods to the fine leather resting against his leg. She recognizes it; a gift from Aeneas after he'd returned to Narbo as a trader. He still sent fancy things, from time to time. Vorena could almost miss the boy. "And if we are considering duties," her father continues, "You are also not at the festival."

"I'm taking care of my father. Isn't that a daughter's duty?" Vorena shifts, lets her head rest against his shoulder. Even now her father is a solid man, and though his hair has long been white he is strong and warm and comfortable. He puts an arm around her and continues his story of shipwrecks and luck. Vorena has heard all the stories before, and listens with only half an ear. 

The sun makes a magnificent view, setting out across the sea. There are times when Vorena misses their little farm tucked away in relatively civilized Narbonica, but this wild western land has its beauty as well. The ground is as fertile as her sister, the valley defensible, and they've  _built_ something. It's not everything, perhaps, but Vorena considers it enough.

When stars finally glitter on the horizon, she nudges Vorenus with her elbow. 

"Time for sleep, father." Though he grumbles, he rises, leaning heavily on his cane. More heavily these past few days, she thinks, and wonders if this will be his last winter. It's a lonely thought, which in itself is nearly enough to make her smile; it wasn't as if she hadn't thought about putting a pillow over his face more than once in her life. 

She watches him make his slow way down the hill, and crouched back down, patting the soft mound of earth below the tree. Grass was beginning to grow upon it, and Vorena decided she would bring up an offering tomorrow. Wine, and good bread. 

"Good night, old man."

Vorena rises and follows her father down the hill.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The final location is a tiny uninhabited valley in Portugal that is 100% made up.  
> 2) Have a lovely holiday!


End file.
